Page 20 - Industries_of_San_Antonio

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES. 19

ton, general ticket agent ; J. E. Fisher, Houston, auditor. The head-
quarters of the company are at Houston.
On the line of the International & Great Northern Railway are the
following points, most accessible to San Antonio and lying in a richer agri-
cultural belt than those to the west on the Sunset : North—Adams, Wet-
more, Davenport, Corbyn, New Braunfels, Goodwin, Hunter, San Marcos,
Kyle, Buda, and Manchaca. Further on, they belong properly to Austin.
South—Leon, Medina, Kirk, Lytell, Wallace, Devine, Moore, Eden,
Pearsall, Derby, Fort Millett, Cotulla, Tuna, Twohig, Burro, Encinal,
Cactus, Webb, Green, Sanchez and Laredo.
There is no necessity to wonder where the merchants of San Antonio,
with this showing, get their support, and have bright prospects for the
future.
These advantages were the pride of San Antonio several years back
and of course will ever be ; but a community such as now live in her pre-
cincts could not be satisfied with these when so many possibilities present
themselves. A more progressive people have not been known than those
who have exerted themselves to give San Antonio her present commercial
status, and a new enterprise is now in process of completion which must
soon after elevate her interests in every way. It must be remembered
that Galveston, situated as she is on the Texas coast,; with the most favor-
able harbor of Texas cities, has enjoyed the reputation of supplying the
interior cities and towns for years, until direct northern connection by rail
greatly enhanced the prosperity of north Texas, and interfered greatly
with Galveston's port receipts. Nevertheless as settlements sprung up to
the west, she enjoyed the pleasure of supplying them with nearly all their
importations ; and even San Antonio's goods passed principally through
her markets.
The people of San Antonio, ambitious and anxious to take advantage
of every opportunity for self-aggrandizement, have by their own exertions
projected and entered upon the building of the
SAN ANTONIO & ARANSAS PASS RAILWAY,
giving as soon as completed an uninterrupted route to Corpus Christi, to
which place all goods procured in the New England states will come direct
and suffer but one rehandling before delivered to their consignees in San
Antonio.
The present route by which she must reach Galveston is 240 miles. It
is appreciable what an enormous saving in freight expenditures will be
realized by shortening this route to seventy-five miles, since the through
rate to Corpus Christi by vessel cannot and will not exceed that existing
between New York and Galveston at the present date.
With the completion of this enterprise, what must be the natural
result ?
Texas is the State of all the United States, with unlimited and as yet
untested resources; and, as we have said, north, east, south and west of